


A Date With Destiny

by Roadstergal



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Anal Sex, Dating, Double Dating, Gen, M/M, Mathematics, Motorcycles, Prostitution, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 10:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15458868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: Tony's desire to get Steve to finally go on a date leads Steve to wonder - what is going on with a billionaire playboy who does not actually go on dates himself?





	1. Chapter 1

"I really don't know."  Steve frowned, looking at the flier.  It was a very simple flier, and he had read it at least ten times over already, but he read it again. "It just isn't _me_."

"Didn't we agree that we need to push our comfort zone?"  Tony spread his arms, giving Steve that _smirk_ that Steve was never sure how seriously to take.

"Sure, but the idea is to push our comfort zone in a way that grows us.  I'm not sure that this will," Steve frowned, turning it in his hands again, "grow me."

"Come on, Steve." Tony sat down across from him, pushing back from the table with his feet to tip the chair back on the rear two legs.  "You haven't been on a date since you've thawed out, have you?  Live a little!"

"Much as I hate to agree with Tony," Nat added, arms crossed, "you've really thrown yourself into the superhero work.  I don't know if hanging around with _us_ all of the time is the healthiest thing.  You need to interact with..." her eyes flickered from Tony to Sam to the kitchenette, where Hulk was painstakingly assembling a massive sandwich, "normal people."

"Hey!" Sam replied, wounded, putting the soldering iron aside.  "I'm normal!"

"Yeah, normal people fly around the skies of New York in a high-tech exoskeleton," Nat said.

"I just don't know how... this whole dating thing works!" Steve sighed, putting the flier down.  A gathering of men and women in one room, and they... just paired off with each other?  It felt so forced, so superficial!

"It's easy, Cap!" Tony ticked off the points on his fingers.  "You're in a room with a lot of women.  You rank them by your personal preference, then go up to them in that order and ask them out.  I mean," Tony shrugged, "it all basically follows a Gale-Shapley algorithm. I could account for indifference, but," he laughed, "I really don't believe in that..." He paused.  Everyone was giving him that _look_.  "What?"

"I don't know what that means," Steve replied, "but that sounds kinda... gross." In a very Tony way.  Stripping the humanity out, reducing everything down to 0s and 1s.

"Gross?" Tony actually looked wounded.  "It's just math!"

"That's exactly what I mean.  Why just _me_ , though?  Why don't you come with me?  _You_ haven't been on a date in all the time I've known you, have you?"  Despite his self-cultivated _billionaire playboy_ image.  Interesting, that.

"I don't have to," Tony noted, leaning back on his folded arms, "they come after me."

"Bad strategy," Hulk growled, stomping over with the sandwich in hand. "Initiator optimal." He took a massive bite.  Ever since the de-Hulking, Steve thought, Bruce and Hulk had gotten integrated to a disconcerting degree.  Hearing the Hulk talk like that would never _not_ be disconcerting - or delightful.

And it actually disconcerted Tony enough to make him frown, tipping his chair back a little past the balance point and having to recover.  "Well, it's just not a priority for me."

"Why not, big guy?" Nat asked, slyly.  Sam was looking at him expectantly, too, and Steve was grateful to see the attention turned away from him, and onto a very deserving target.

Tony slammed his chair back down on all four legs.  "Look, you're all getting very far afield from the important point, here, which is _getting Steve to go on a date_.  We'll all talk him up, make sure he looks all Captained up, I got him a suit, he promises not to come home until he's actually talked to a girl and gotten her phone number -  yeah?"

Steve stared at Tony.  "You got me a suit?" he asked, bewildered.


	2. Chapter 2

Despite how late he had gone to bed the night before, Steve's body woke him up crisply and precisely at 5:30 in the morning.  He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but it was useless.  He was properly awake.  He rolled out of bed with a protesting groan.

Well, a visit to the gym would help get him back on schedule.  He dressed in workout clothes and headed down.  The gym was empty except for one person, which was a blessing; that one person was Tony, which was not.

"Up late last night, Cap?" he asked, far too cheerfully, picking up a set of barbells.

"Thanks to you."  Steve went a fair way farther down the rack to pick the appropriate weights for _him_.

"You're welcome!  You wouldn't have come home that late if you hadn't gotten a date.  Tell me more."

Steve turned and lifted carefully, thoughtfully.  "Well, her name was Katherine.  She's a flight attendant for United.  She's pretty." Very pretty, almost as tall as Steve, slender and elegant, with little dimples on either side of her mouth when she smiled, her sandy blonde hair in a neat bun.

"And?  Next date?" Tony's tone was airy as he lifted, but Steve knew him better than that.  He could tell that Tony was paying more attention than usual.

"Yes, when she comes back from her next flight on Thursday.  She agreed to another date - on one condition."

"Ooh, let me guess.  She wants you to set up a Twitter account so she can tag you in selfies?  Grow an organ-grinder mustache with the curly ends?"

"She wants to go on a double date.  You and her friend." It had been the other way around, truthfully - Steve requesting the double date - but once he had said who his friend was, she had agreed readily.  Maybe Tony hadn't been lying, and that was a little creepy.  For some reason. But Steve _had_ to get a little closer to the bottom of this.

"Nope!" Tony replied, cheerily.

"Yes, you are.  Don't you want me to go on another date?"

"Tell her I'm sick. Or dead.  Or something."

"Tony, what's good for the gander is good for the... other gander.  You wanted me to go on a date, and I did.  Now it's your turn.  Come with me, it'll be fun."

Tony paused in his workout, looking at Steve thoughtfully.  Just for a moment.  Then he went back to the weight rack.  "All right.  One date."

 

* * *

 

Katherine's friend Trix was, if anything, even more stunning - almost as tall, just as elegant, dark hair in a million tiny braids, flawless dark skin.  She seemed pleased to meet Tony, and who wouldn't?  The man wore his suit with all of the ease that Steve didn't have, and did easy small talk scintillatingly over a light dinner and then drinks (which did not affect Steve, of course) - about the weather, the Mets vs the Yankees, the updated subway cars, the alien attacks that had become as frequent and laughable as rainstorms.

All in all, it was startlingly successful.  Tony's endless flow of light, meaningless chatter was buoyant enough for Steve to float his own conversation on, and Katherine and Trix filled in their own nightmare-client and celebrity-sighting stories to round out the evening, the mood carrying through drinks and down a walk through Riverside Park until they packed the two giggling, tipsy girls into a rideshare and turned to walk back to the tower.

"So, that was successful!" Steve prompted Tony. 

"Yeah," he replied, thoughtfully.  "It was.  Are you going to see Katherine again?"

"Maybe.  What about you and Trix?"

"Nope!"

Steve looked over at Tony.  His face looked no different from usual - distressingly unreadable.  "Did she not stroke your ego enough?"

"Just the right amount."  Again, Steve could never tell if he was joking.  "But I'm not looking for a girlfriend right now."

"Why not?" Steve asked, feeling a little frustration building up.  "Despite that," he reached out to tap at the arc reactor where it glowed faintly behind his shirt and tie, "you're still a human being, aren't you?"

"Yes, but maybe I'm not a slave to my whims?"  Tony pulled out his card and touched it to the sensor beside the tower door.  They walked inside as it slid open.

"Tony," Steve replied, frowning, as they stepped onto the elevator, "you're at the very least an indentured servant to your whims.  Your whims have you wrapped around their little fingers."

"Not in this," Tony replied, and his air was a little less dismissively cheerful.  That, Steve could get his teeth into.  He turned to face Tony.

"So what," he replied, "makes this so different?  You cultivate an image of a billionaire playboy, but you're not one at all, Tony.  Why not?  Why try so hard to appear to be something you're not?"

The door slid open smoothly.  Tony put his hand on Steve's shoulder.  "It's just part of the image, Cap.  It's what everyone expects."

"No," Steve sighed as Tony walked out and marched steadfastly towards his room, "it's not."


	3. Chapter 3

A motorcycle was not exactly the ideal stealth vehicle.  But it could move through traffic, it could take shortcuts, it could keep going when a rideshare stopped at a motel and disgorged its passenger, then flip a U-turn and park quietly across the street.  It would do.

The motel in question was... Steve fished for a word, and all he could come up with was one that he had overheard a girl saying as she took a cell phone picture of a dismembered troll covered with green ichor - _skeevy_.  It had a certain old, tired, unclean appearance, a dinginess that felt like it would never go away no matter how hard you cleaned - and so nobody even tried.  He watched from around a corner of the building as Tony walked alone into the office, had a terse conversation with the manager, during which cash was exchanged for an old-school, physical room key, and walked back out again.  A man emerged from the shadows next to the office, tall and muscular, a flash of blonde hair just barely visible in the dim sodium streetlamp.  He met Tony with no gestures exchanged, and the two of them walked together towards one of the rooms, the mystery man placing his hand on the small of Tony's back in a way that gave Steve the creeps.

Steve noted the room that they both walked into.  This was strange indeed.  Tony, with no explanation, walking out of the tower at a time he knew he would be least missed - when Thor and Hulk were having their game night, when Nat was studying, when Sam and Clint were trying out new experimental designs for arrows and wings. Not to mention the time that Steve reserved for boxing practice in the gym, practice that he had ended very abruptly when he saw Tony heading for the elevator.  The man had been acting... odd... and Steve had to know what was going on.  An arms deal?  A handover of classified information?  But why had he not told any of the rest of the Avengers, why was it so clandestine?  A familiar tightness found its way to Steve's chest.  Tony, with the best of all intentions, doing the worst of all possible actions and striking off on his own. Again.

The manager barely looked up as Steve walked into the office.  He mumbled the price when Steve asked for the room number next to the one Tony had taken, and handed over the key, staring down at his phone.  That suited Steve just fine.

The smell of the room matched the hotel appearance - something disconcertingly dingy, like the faint hint of uncontrolled fungus behind the wall ready to burst forth, kept barely at bay by artificially scented room cleaner.  Steve's enhanced senses made his nose twitch as he leaned close to the wall, but he had to hear what was going on in the next room.  He frowned.  No talking, just slight sounds of footsteps on cheap pile carpet, then... soft, wet sounds... almost like kissing.  Steve's frown deepened.  What _was_ this?

"I have all night," said an unfamiliar voice, and Steve exhaled in relief at hearing actual _words_.

"I don't."  Tony's voice, without the usual bravado.  Oddly tense.  "I have to be back in a few hours."

"Well, let's get to it."  Another one of those wet sounds, then a series of almost-familiar noises - the rustling of clothes, the creaking of an old, cheap bed, and a few sharp plastic sounds.  Then a noise that almost made Steve run out of the room and straight back to Avengers tower.  Tony _moaned_.  It was a noise that was distressingly familiar - Steve had heard similar noises when Tony was taking off the armor after a particularly bruising mission.  Similar, but not identical.

Steve might be a virgin, but he had stumbled across his share of sex scenes in movies and internet porn (the latter of which had been a source of somewhat guilty masturbation, now and then).  The noises coming from the room - moans, gasps, wet slaps - were familiar enough for him to guess at what was going on.  But Tony?  With another man?  What _was_ this?

A door in the wall between the rooms was surely intended to turn it into the most desultory suite one could find without going to New Jersey, but it interested Steve mostly for its keyhole.  He crouched next to it, and saw a small slice of scene - an unfamiliar hand on a familiar torso, instantly recognizable by the scar going from the ribs up towards the left nipple.  A remnant of a skirmish with the Ten Rings back in the days of the first go-around of the Avengers.

Steve pulled away with a deep breath.  A point existed where concern for one's colleague crossed over into voyeurism, and he was firmly there.  This had nothing to do with the Avengers, it was just Tony... doing what? Well, he thought, hugging himself as he stood in the middle of the room, engaging the services of a prostitute, clearly.  But why?  Why this carefully cultivated image of a wealthy playboy - a wealthy playboy who never actually had sex with women, or even dated them - with _this_ going on guiltily in the background?

These thoughts, and their spinoffs, kept Steve busy as the noises in the next room grew to a crescendo - a relative term, they were still almost painfully stifled - and died off.  A few murmured words, some more noises of clothing and footfalls, and the door opened and slammed shut.

Steve listened to the sound of footfalls on the metal grating outside turn quiet as they moved onto the pavement, then fade away. He waited another ten minutes to make sure the coast was clear, and then opened the door to his own room, almost walking straight into Tony, his face illuminated by the screen of his phone as he looked up at Steve.

"I thought you were gonna be in there all night.  I did twenty levels of Candy Crush."

"Uh."  Very eloquent, Steve.  Lying was right out, for a number of reasons, but the truth wasn't much better.  "I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Tony put the phone away, plunging the scene into darkness broken only by the faint faraway glow of the streetlamps and the flickering of the neon Vacancy sign.  The hooded jacket Tony wore concealed the arc reactor.  "And am I?"

"You seem like it?" Steve ventured.

"Let's go back to the tower," Tony sighed.  "I don't want to be here."

A motorcycle is not the ideal form of transportation for a tense ride home, Steve noted.  It made conversation impossible, which was probably a good break, but Tony hung onto him as if very aware that touch had a different meaning, now, one hand on either side of his waist, gripping tightly, no other points of contact.  They had always touched so easily, so freely, before.  It jarred.

The walk into the tower was tense silence, only broken when the elevator doors slid shut.  "Are you going to tell the rest of them?" Tony was trying for bravado, but it was falling flat.  "Sort of a Secret Santa thing?"

"Tony, no, it's none of their business.  And it's none of mine.  I just thought - well, you wandering out so late at night, not telling any of us - I worried..."

"You thought I was going to go pay to have sex with Ultron?" Tony's eyes were fixed on the floor number as it smoothly ticked up, up, up.

"No... I'm sorry.  I'll let it... I'll..." Steve's tongue felt thick in his mouth.

"Pretend it never happened," Tony finished, firmly.

"Sure, if that's what you want?"

"It's what I want."  Again, a very firm statement.  It settled uneasily onto Steve's shoulders.  Pretending.  Hiding.  He didn't pretend to understand any of this, but it felt _off_ for Tony to feel... ashamed of this?

"I'm going to bed." Tony stepped out of the elevator, striding towards his room.  Steve didn't have to hurry to keep up with him, his long legs eating the ground faster than Tony's.  "Your room is _that way_ , Steve."

"I know," Steve replied. Tony sped up.  Steve stayed with him.

"Are you going to give me a goodnight kiss?" Tony asked, frowning, as he opened the door to his room.  It was bravado, yes, Steve could taste it.  But not pure bravado.  Something was there, something else, something that made Steve's brain move around like a maze, like one of those wooden puzzles his dad would bring him back when he traveled for work, when you got those two pieces to finally fit and the rest of the puzzle fell into place so naturally, as naturally as putting his lips to Tony's and kissing the man, feeling the rough fuzz of his neat, short beard...

Tony melted into him for just one moment.  There was no other word for it - his body pressed to Steve's, his hands moved greedily over the man's back, his lips moved on Steve's - and then he pulled back, almost falling backwards.  "Not funny." The door slammed shut.

Steve stared at it for a long time, thinking about a tall, muscular blonde man, one who would, possibly, look like him if the room were dark enough.


	4. Chapter 4

There was something disconcerting about the deep-seated familiarity of an old pickup truck rattling along a rough road, juxtaposed with the jarring knowledge that they were on a different world - an artificial world, driving across a desert that should not be anywhere near the tower that they drove towards, thrusting itself obscenely out of the deep sand.

There was also something very disconcerting about Tony. Steve knew the man, he thought, fairly well, and in any other context, there would be nothing surprising about all of this preening, this casual self-aggrandizement. His flow of conversation, the details of where he had been and what had happened, was engaging despite the egotism, but Steve felt, very keenly, what was  _not_  being said. The words  _I missed you_. The words  _I was thinking of you_. The words Steve himself wanted to say –  _I couldn’t sleep some nights, thinking of you, feeling your absence_. But how could he express this when Tony seemed no more affected than if he had just stepped out for milk?

“Wow, would you look at that,” Tony noted, pulling up to the tower. He and Steve stepped out of the truck, and Nat hopped out of the bed. “The whole tower!  The energies involved…”

“The other Avengers are out scouting,” Nat said, cutting that monolog off at the pass. “Some might be back already. We’ll let them all know you're…”

“Nope!” Tony spread his arms, waving them as he walked in the main door. “I gotta make a grand entrance. And I gotta clean up first, this hobo look does not scream  _grand entrance_. I gotta look the part, change, shave…” He tugged at his mess of tangled hair.

“Really, Tony?” Steve asked, frowning at him as the elevator doors slid shut. “You’re going to have them think you’re dead for longer, while you get cleaned up?”

“They’ve waited this long, what’s another ten minutes?”

“You really don’t get it, do you.” Such a common phrase of Steve’s, where Tony was concerned. The elevator slid upwards smoothly, rapidly.

“No, I don’t, what’s there to get? I look terrible and I stink. Does that scream  _fearless leader_ to you?”

Nat rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’ll go see if I can reach them and call them back in. Don’t take too long prettying up,” she admonished Tony, exiting the elevator and heading for the comm room.

“Feel free to do… whatever you do to relax,” Tony told Steve, walking towards his own room. “It’ll just be a jif.”

Steve followed him, shaking his head. Unreal. This was all unreal, and not really in a good way. Tony was back… and it was as if he had barely noticed that he was gone? That  _Steve_ was gone? What had happened to all of those words about Steve being his friend, making him a better person… what had happened to that look Tony had given him, when they were separated, trying to touch across a rift between two dimensions? A  _longing_  look, Steve had thought at the time?

“Or you can… follow me into my room, nothing creepy about that?” Tony turned, standing next to his bed.

“Are you going to cut your own hair?” Steve closed the door behind them. “I’ll do it. I’m not great, but I used to cut my friends’ hair growing up. I can give it a go.”

Tony’s face went through a few attempts at an expression. He stepped close and poked gently at Steve’s chest. “Please tell me it’s you, and not a hallucination. It’s been a weird bunch of years.”

“Is that what’s worrying you?” Steve grabbed Tony’s hand, the gauntlet filthy and pitted. It had seen a lot of use, and not a lot of care. Tony had the same look. “I missed you, Tony. Why can’t you say that?”

Tony shrugged, looking away. “I missed you, I couldn’t sleep a lot of nights wondering if you were okay, blah blah, I thought we took this all as read?”

“I never take anything as read, Tony! I never know what’s going on in that head of yours!”

“Look, I might be a genius, but the regular stuff, the  _people_  stuff – that’s all the same, okay? Same as you.” Tony tried to pull his hand away. Steve didn’t let him. Not right now.

“I don’t know it’s the same. I don’t know what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, if you don’t tell me. I swear I don’t know what goes on in your head, if you even  _like_  me, most days!”

That last bit had come out despite himself. It was a little cheap, a little petulant. Steve wasn’t quite sure what to expect in turn, but Tony looking down and saying, fairly quietly, but very clearly, “I adore you” wasn’t on the short list.

Steve froze for a moment, processing this, as Tony pulled his hand away and wandered over to his closet, picking out clothing. “Anyway. Nice to see you. What have you been up to? The same gang as usual? Got yourself a girlfriend? What was the name of that flight attendant – Kristin, Karyn, Katrine? You know, I…”

He hadn’t noticed Steve crossing the distance between them, and certainly seemed surprised when Steve grabbed his shoulders, spun him around, and pressed his lips to Tony’s. A black shirt fell out of his hands and onto the ground as he grasped at Steve’s arms.

“So… no on the girlfriend?” he gasped when they paused for air.

“Apparently, it was a line in the sand when I asked her to put a glowy light on her chest,” Steve replied, and Tony swallowed a panicked little laugh. Steve kissed him again, briefly. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“You can… uh… join me, if you want. Not saying you’re not squeaky clean, you always are.” Tony stepped back and pulled off his filthy shirt.

“Hey, try this sometime.  _I’d like you to shower with me_. Is it all that hard?”

“Yup. Terrifying.” Tony sat on the bed and stripped off his gauntlets and boots.

“Wow! I found something the great Tony Stark is scared of!” The new uniform came off with suspicious ease as Steve pressed at the catches. “I’ll make a note of it in your file.”

“Tell anyone else, and I’ll kill them.” The rest of the clothing joined the shirt in a sad pile. “I won’t kill  _you_ , I like you.”

“Good, I’m glad we got that cleared up.” This was never going to be easy, Steve noted. But at least now, he had a sense of what a road map might look like. And what Tony responded to. That look on his face, when Steve had momentarily forgotten himself, had swept Tony off of the ground… Experimentally, he picked Tony up – a little too easily, the man had gotten scrawny in his wandering – and kissed him firmly as he carried him to the shower.

“We probably can’t swing a proper sexy shower,” Tony gasped, “don’t know how long the water is going to have to last…”

That didn’t matter. They had shampoo, and it was slippery, and Steve might have spent a little too much time on the Internet thinking about how this might go, after that night he had been an inadvertent voyeur. The scenarios had been plentiful and diverse, and he had never gotten the gumption to actually mention any of this to Tony. Well, he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He dropped Tony and doused his fingers with shampoo, sliding two if them into Tony, greedily, impatiently.

“That… uh… doesn’t need… cleaning…” Tony gasped, grabbing at him.

“Need this,” Steve replied, firmly, and the more he thrust and twisted, sliding in a third finger, the less the noises coming out of Tony’s mouth sounded like words. Steve swallowed them with his own mouth, pulling his fingers out in response to Tony tugging at his arm, then putting his erection where his fingers had been in response to more intricate tugging.

It was almost stereotypical, having him up against the shower wall, but Steve did not care. It was warm, and close, and deliriously pleasurable, and the way Tony held him, his hands moving over Steve’s back, his shoulders, his arms – it was perfect, just perfect. And it didn’t last long, Steve finishing too soon like the virgin he was, grunting and sweating, Tony grabbing himself to finish off quickly while Steve was coming to a shuddering halt.

“Not bad for a first go,” Tony noted, panting, adding a little whimper as Steve slid out.

“Does that mean you want more goes?” Steve kissed his lower lip, the scraggly beard tickling his own lips.

“Yeah, I think I’d be into that…” Steve cocked his head, and Tony rolled his eyes, his tone like a chastised child. “All right – I love you and want you to do that a lot more, are you  _happy_?”

“Yes.” Steve smiled. “Very happy.” Yes, this would not last – they would be in the company of the rest of the Avengers shortly, and Tony would put on the role of The Great Tony Stark, prickly and egotistical, the man for whom life was just a big joke waiting for the right moments to sprinkle in clever catch-phrases. But Steve had, at least, seen a glimpse of what else there was there, what else lurked behind those big brown eyes. He would remember. And keep searching.


End file.
